Liberals in Congress just do not get it. They ignored the teaparties, with some even making fun of those protesting their reckless spending. Like I have said before, they are concentrating on the wrong things. Instead of trying to cut government spending, they are increasing government and looking for ways to take more of your money to pay for it. One of their ideas is the Value Added Tax used in many European countries. Just think of it as a national sales tax on top of your income taxes. It will increase the cost of just about everything you buy.
The Obama administration says that they are not looking too closely at the VAT as a possibility, but their actions say otherwise. Orszag has hired a VAT advocate to advise the White House. And it is none other than Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of Rahm Emanuel. You would have to be pretty persuasive to convince me he is the best person to advise Obama on this tax, which brings up another point. The White House also says that they would not use it to pay for healthcare, but Emanuel’s book about how to use the tax is called “Health Care, Guaranteed.”
This tax is not a friend of the politician so the only way they could get it through Congress would be to make it progressive; somehow making the rich pay for it with the poor getting a government provided healthcare plan. I am not sure exactly how you could do that, but I am sure people such as Bob McIntyre could figure it out. He is another VAT advocate that just happens to have a health financing plan of his own that targets corporations and the rich.
In reality I doubt that they will push it through because it would be so politically unpopular how ever you spin it. As Karl Rove pointed out, Obama’s team meets once a week to go over poll numbers and I doubt breaking his promise to raise taxes on those making less than $200,000 would go over well (even though he already has). These little meetings I am sure led to Obama’s minions Axelrod and Goolsbee going on TV last week announcing that the President is against taxing employer-provided health insurance. That is another revenue increasing idea being pushed by Democrats in Congress in case you did not know. Instead the President wants to tax the rich more and make us as socialistic as possible. The only problem is that it has been pointed out time and time again that the top brackets do not have enough money to cover all of his increased spending. Eventually they will have to increase taxes on those who he promised not to raise taxes on. That or continue creating record deficits as he has done this year. Most likely it will be in the form of legislation such as Cap and Trade where he taxes you without you realizing it. Or with a new imaginative term such as the infamous ‘refundable tax credit’, which they used to hide government handouts.
Regardless of whether the VAT tax is taken seriously or not, it does expose this administrations mindset. They are looking to get more revenue any way they can, which means more of your tax dollars. They feel they have to because they used this crisis to push a very liberal agenda that they could not actually afford otherwise and now that the damage is done, they want to appear responsible. After all, they do want to get re-elected. In the very beginning the Obama administration used very optimistic economic numbers to push their economic plan. Now the reality of the situation is that the new employment numbers and tax revenue numbers are much worse than even their worst case scenario. It probably has them scared as it should. The real question is what they will do about it. You would hope that it would stop additional government intervention in our lives. But as this newest revenue scheme shows, they probably will try new tax after new tax until one sticks.
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